Thanks to dentist Dr. Mac Lee of Edna, Texas for bringing this Navy training video to our attention for this edition of TimeWarp Tuesday. You will be both impressed by the way things were done back then and relieved that dentistry has progressed so much since. Even though it’s a bit longer than you’d usually sit through, remember PEARLS! There are pearls here, even in the way, way back times.

Like Smears! They were doing bacterial profiles in 1944! And Check Out That Piece of Autoclave Artwork. That is definitely something that would look good in your practice, and you would have to drive it, like you would a classic auto, not daily, but just BECAUSE. Sure, the new one is faster, but the old is a CLASSIC and you would use it because it’s too cool just to keep it locked up in a museum somewhere.

Be sure to look out for these bitty tids of juice as well:

• Procaine. That looks like some scary stuff to be injecting into people.
• The long exposure time on the radiograph.
• 10 minute sterilization in a water bath? Really?
• The surgery cart and tongs are creepy awesome.
• What the heck kind of toothbrushing technique is that?

With an emphasis of keeping everything super clean, this is probably the most memorable line in the video:

Welcome to the latest edition of Timewarp Tuesdays, where you are NOT asked to click your heels three times, or threatened to have houses dropped on your relatives, or coerced to chant “there’s no place like home” because there was much more to 1939 than overbudget Hollywood films.

Like Tube Lights! There were tube lights, the precursors to fiber optics, in ginormous scale. Wands! To deliver light to the unlit crevices of orificies from Omaha to Oregon to Oz.

Click on the photo below to see this excerpt from the March 1939 issue of Popular Science in its full-size:

This looks pretty amazing for the time, actually. And it makes me wonder if our isolites, our fiber-optic handpieces, our loupe-mounted headlights, and other super-LED tech will seem quaint in another 70 years. And if so, what will replace them? Teeth lit from the inside? A glowing pink ball that drops from the ceiling and slowly expands to fully illuminate the oral cavity?

In the end it’s about the power of the light, something that is essential for our practice. Maybe Glenda said it best back in 1939:

Since this month is the 5th anniversary of the moment our practice switched over to digital radiography (and thank goodness we never have to endure the vinegary processing solutions again!), I thought it would be nostalgic to offer up this latest edition of Timewarp Tuesdays and honor The Cone.

Admit it, you can’t help but call the long cylindrical chunk of metal pointing out from your x-ray machine anything but a cone. Even though it probably wasn’t a cone when you were in dental school. It hasn’t been a cone for over 30 years. But maybe you’re old enough to remember a cone getting pointed at you when you were a kid, like I am.

Back in the early 70’s it was all about sleek and modern – there was something a little sexy about the cone, like it was one-half of a pointy brassiere aimed right next to your eye. A woman would cram something in your mouth, tilt the cone at your face and then leave the room for a moment, giving you time alone with it to contemplate its form and function, maybe try a little small talk with it.

Intriguing, this cone.

Come to find out, it was just a cheap plastic pointer, as exemplified in this advertisement from 1945:

See what I mean about the wistful gaze, our GI mesmerized by that white cone because it reminds him of a part of his sweetheart back home? You can click on him to get a better look at the advertising copy. And AHHHHH! Seriously? Pointing it RIGHT AT HIS CAJONES? We’ve come a long way since then.

Plaskon touted that its cones could withstand “…the terrific impact of X-rays which can disturb the molecular structure of many materials.” Many materials… like human flesh?

Apparently the reason that cones were phased out was because they were an impedance to radiation safety, and so they have since been replaced with the familiar long cylinder collimators. About the same time that the medical community figured out that scatter radiation was preventable, they also realized that imaging could be improved with focused beaming techniques. So the cone is gone, even though the name lives on.

And so to honor the history of dental radiography, I now present you with this Dental Radiographic Cone homage collage:

BZZT! ZAP! [sizzle] ffffphP. I can almost smell the singe of old wires firing up.

Helping to frame our future are the particulars from the past. Welcome to TimeWarp Tuesdays, where you can savor the soul food of “I remember that,” recoil from the utter barbarity of the not so good ol’ days, or simply be amused and entertained.

This cuspidor was a hot seller in the 1890’s and gave way to more modern versions of the “swish and spit” bowl well into the 1980’s. If it weren’t for the AIDS epidemic in the US we might not have ever gotten rid of these germholes. But yet, they’re still part of modern dentistry in most other countries. What gives?

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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